Surveillance Countermeasures

Book excerpt: Surveillance Countermeasures By: Aden C. Magee In today’s prolific hostile threat environment, surveillance countermeasures expertise is a necessary component of security knowledge. The wide range of increasingly unconstrained threats to the personal privacy and security of average citizens include common criminals and stalkers, private and corporate investigators, government-sponsored espionage and other covert agencies, and international crime and terrorist organizations. In virtually all cases, the elements that threaten individual, corporate, or national security conduct surveillance operations to further their objectives, or as the primary means to an end Surveillance countermeasures are actions taken by an individual or security detail to identify the presence of surveillance and, if necessary, to elude or evade the individual or group conducting the surveillance. Understanding how the surveillance threat thinks and reacts is the basis of effective surveillance countermeasures. This manual details surveillance countermeasures concepts, techniques, and procedures that are proven effective against the spectrum of surveillance capabilities ranging from the very basic to the world’s most sophisticated. This manual now supersedes the previous industry standards as the authoritative resource on surveillance countermeasures principles, procedures, and practices. This manual is a compilation of the most relevant details from two of the all-time classics and best-sellers in the genre – Surveillance Countermeasures and Countering Hostile Surveillance. It also draws precise threat/surveillance perspective from another of the all-time greats – Secrets of Surveillance. The fact that this manual consolidates the knowledge derived from these three unparalleled classics demonstrates that this manual now represents the full-spectrum amalgam of surveillance countermeasures methodologies ranging from the foundational baseline of tactics and techniques to the most advanced concepts and procedures. This revised instant classic for the genre also includes many additional details and special-interest topics to form an informational/educational resource like no other. Written by one of the rare breed who has actually stalked the streets and stood in the shadows, this manual presents surveillance countermeasures tradecraft from the theoretical to the practical levels in terms of the “art” and “science.” The execution of techniques as components of methodical procedures to effectively manipulate and exploit a hostile surveillance effort is representative of a security professional or security-conscious individual operating at the master’s level of surveillance countermeasures tradecraft. The information and instruction in this manual begins with the basics and then takes the practitioner to that level execution.